iPhone 14 Pro Max Is wireless charging detrimental to battery life?

[saudor]

Heat can decrease battery life and wireless charging "can" heat up the battery. Low wattage wired charging should yield the longest battery life!

Next will come the "do not worry about your battery" posters!

To be honest, it doesn't matter for most people here since according to that macrumors poll, many update every year (and sometimes twice in one year) You can even stab your battery and it'd probably be fine since they'll get a new phone anyways!

But yeah, heat definitely degrades battery so for people like me that keep phones for 6-7 years, every bit helps! With wireless charging, it gets scorching hot, at least for my 8+. Im sure the newer ones arent as bad though

 

[J.A.K.]

The battery very clearly gets much hotter charging wirelessly than it does wired. That alone is proof enough that it's worse for battery life as it's a very well known fact that LiOn bats don't like getting hot.

 

[Reggaenald]

But the problem seems to affect the iPhone 14 Pro more than any previous model… there is another thread here speaking about that. So I’m not sure wireless charging is the culprit here 🤔



AppleCare + is a joke, regarding battery. It will cover it only if the health goes below 80% in just 2 years, which is quite difficult.
BTW I have AppleCare +, as usual, but this doesn’t help me at all.


No, it’s not “pretty normal”. I NEVER had an iPhone going so low after just one year (and we usually have 4 iPhone in the family, so the statistic is not so irrelevant). It seems that iPhone 14 Pro has a worse battery than before. I could think about my unit, but then yesterday I discovered the thread about several people complaining about battery wearing off quicker than before.


I know that very well… I never discharge my iPhone below 30% and I’m taking it off the charger at 90% whenever is practical. Always did that, but this IP14 Pro Max seems to be more “fragile”.


Again, AppleCare + is not going to help you here, unless your battery really is defective.

I would agree with you, but you might just have a bad unit, that’s all. Your experience is subjective.
Now that’s each year it’s subjective as well, with more and more people joining forums like this.

 

[Reggaenald]

Not sure. I only use a cable on mine. Just got my 14 Pro like a month or two ago.

So far the battery life is awesome lol.

But my OS is tweaked.

What do you mean your OS is tweaked?

 

[Elusi]

As others say, it gets hotter. Therefore it should be worse.

How much worse? Well, anecdotally my 11 Pro hit 83% after three years. I've almost exclusively charged it wirelessly. After that I got a new battery which I've had for a year and it's on 98%. Still charging wirelessly.

(Crazy the 11-line is four years old. Feels like I just got this one!)

My iPhone 6S, which could not charge wirelessly, didn't report an official percentage but I swapped the battery two times during those four years and both times the old battery had basically imploded and wasn't capable of reporting a correct charge.

Again, anecdotal. Need much more data. From my experience I've not gotten afraid of using wireless charging.

 

[izzy0242mr]

Wireless charging is no more detrimental to your battery life and efficiency than wired. And in fact possibly better because it charges at a slower rate.

Not true.

Wireless charging is less efficient (using around 50% more energy on average), so it has to charge longer to get your battery to the same level. This is also just basic physics: things transmitted wirelessly requires more energy to get to the destination than via a direct cable because they have to travel through more things (charging pad material, atmosphere, metal body of phone, etc) to get there, versus a cable which is designed to be a direct connection. It's why ethernet works faster than wifi, why we don't have wireless charging for most devices, etc.

Normally slower charging would be a good thing (slow charge > fast charge for battery health), except for the fact that wireless charging generates a lot of heat, which is bad for battery health.

So you are exposing the phone and battery to more heat for a longer period of time than you would if you'd plugged it in.

Short term it may not matter as much, but for those of us who care about the environment and try not to contribute to e-waste more than necessary (for both financial responsibility and environmentally conscious reasons) and who thus want to keep our devices for as long as possible, wireless charging objectively is not aa good a choice as wired charging because wireless charging wastes electricity and heats up our batteries more, which makes them degrade faster.

Wireless Charging VS Wired Charging: Which One Is Better?

Will wireless charging take over from the more traditional wired method and become the one to use from now on?

www.ipitaka.com

 

[James6s]

Whether it is or it isn’t, the fastest I’ve had battery health % drop is with wireless chargers. Don’t use them anymore.

 

[cateye]

iPhone 13 Pro, exclusively charged wirelessly (MagSafe puck), overnight (the only exception is that I got a car with wired CarPlay in 2022, so whenever I'm in the car it's charging whether it needs it or not), coming on its second anniversary. 98% battery health. So clearly, My anecdata is better than everyone else's anecdata.

I am baffled to the extent that people seem to suffer actual stress about all this. It's a battery. They have a finite life span. Little of what we do alters that more than a few percentage points one way or another. Use your device, charge it when it needs to be charged with whatever method is most convenient for you, and stop worrying about it so much.

 

[StumpyBloke]

To say it’s not less efficient than wired charging us just wrong. Just, wrong.
Which is obvious if you’ve ever felt your charging cable or the port compared to the wireless charger or the back of the phone in terms of temperature.
Heat means inefficiency.

I’m not referring to the (charging) inefficiency inherent with wireless charging, I am on about the supposed detrimental effect to the batteries overall efficiency/life due to wireless charging. This, I don’t buy in to.

 

[t0rqx]

Wireless charging is bad. Only the fanbois defend it, the same that think Apple invented it.

On top you doing this in a 14 PM which is notorious for Apple using bad batteries that deplete in few months, because these were the first batteries using recycled materials. They only used it as marketing in the 15, but it is the sole reason 14 batteries down 80% in few months.

 

[TracerAnalog]

Wireless: absopositivetely use magsafe ONLY. The correct alignment makes all the difference. If the iPhone is not perfectly alligned, the charging coils will heat up, and the heat will deteriorate the battery. Especially in warm temperatures in summer, when charging in your glovebox in your car, whilst you’re using CarPlay to navigate whilst streaming lossless over 5G. Man… that was a mistake 😅😂🤪

 

[Abazigal]

Wireless charging is bad. Only the fanbois defend it, the same that think Apple invented it.

On top you doing this in a 14 PM which is notorious for Apple using bad batteries that deplete in few months, because these were the first batteries using recycled materials. They only used it as marketing in the 15, but it is the sole reason 14 batteries down 80% in few months.

I won't say it's bad. It really comes down to whether you value convenience or battery health more.

I had been using MagSafe to charge my 13 pro max (bought that Belkin 3-in-1 charger) and it's really very handy, especially when I wake up at 5 am in the morning and want to quickly grab my phone from the desk and don't have to worry about accidentally yanking on the cable.

However, I also saw what it did to my battery health (dropped approximate 1% a month, till it stabilised at 81% until Applecare+ expired). I finally had it replaced in December, and am now back to charging it with a normal usb lightning cable, and it's definitely slightly more inconvenient, plus there's that extra cable on my desk now.

We will see how long it goes. And I did spend a pretty penny on that charger too...

 

[CopCarJeff]

Wireless charging is bad. Only the fanbois defend it, the same that think Apple invented it.

On top you doing this in a 14 PM which is notorious for Apple using bad batteries that deplete in few months, because these were the first batteries using recycled materials. They only used it as marketing in the 15, but it is the sole reason 14 batteries down 80% in few months.

Well I must of been lucky one because I wireless charged my 14p and after 1 year and 2 months it was down to 95% with moderate use and charging it up when it got down to 60% every day

 

[Gregintosh]

My 14 Pro Max got down to 82% battery health after 1 year. Mostly wireless charging daily with a Belkin "official"/"made for iPhone" charging station. I think the 14 series just had low quality batteries. Remains to be seen how the 15 series works out.

I did recently buy a wireless charging stand from ESR that has a fan built into the MagSafe (also "Made for iPhone") to keep the phone cool while charging and at the same time allowing it to charge faster (since it doesn't need to throttle due to heat).

So far so good with it. But let's see in a year's time.

 

[one more]

It is a multifactorial thing, where you need to take into account a quality and power output of your charger, your iPhone case, charging length, etc.

Generally speaking, a wired charger is always more efficient, as no power is “lost” and it generates less heat during the charge, especially if you charge your iPhone with Apple’s old 5W socket adapter (which I do overnight, BTW).

Apple’s MagSafe chargers are ok if you have a MagSafe compatible case or no case at all. The worst wireless chargers are found in the cars, as those tend to heat up the phones a lot. In my experience, wired low-W charging overnight works best for the battery’s longevity, but there are people who either change their iPhones frequently, or just swap the battery when it stops meeting their expectations.

FWIW, your iPhone’s battery should be fine for the first 3 years, regardless of the % shown in Settings > Battery. I have used my 12 mini (which apparently had the worst battery setup) for almost three years and it still has 84% (Apple) or 87% (Coconut battery) capacity left with its original battery.

Finally, ChatGPT says this:

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Wireless charging destroyed the battery on my iPhone 12 so I ditched it and went back to wired. My 13 Pro Max is on 98% whereas my 12 was on 88% in just 18 months. There is something not right about a phone getting warm from wireless charging. Lots of user reports out there to suggest it’s tougher on batteries.

Apple did stop supplying chargers to encourage us to use the old ones we have, so I did just that. No way would I ever invest in MagSafe.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Well I must of been lucky one because I wireless charged my 14p and after 1 year and 2 months it was down to 95% with moderate use and charging it up when it got down to 60% every day

I’d say you’re unlucky as my 13 Pro Max is on 98% and I am a fairly heavy user. My battery goes below 50% everyday and I charge via plugging the phone in overnight.

 

[adrianlondon]

Next will come the "do not worry about your battery" posters!

Thanks for the invite. Sorry I'm late.

Compared to the cost of the phone itself, a replacement battery isn't that much. For many people, it's easier to just replace the battery after 3 or 4 years than it is to micro-manage the charging.

My personal opinion is that wireless charging is inefficient and hence worse for the environment than wired but, unless it's a bad charger or a bug causes the phone to overheat, is not detrimental to battery life. The main way to negatively impact battery life is to regularly fast-charge and/or cycle between 0 and 100%.

 

[sunapple]

Thanks for the invite. Sorry I'm late.

Compared to the cost of the phone itself, a replacement battery isn't that much. For many people, it's easier to just replace the battery after 3 or 4 years than it is to micro-manage the charging.

My personal opinion is that wireless charging is inefficient and hence worse for the environment than wired but, unless it's a bad charger or a bug causes the phone to overheat, is not detrimental to battery life. The main way to negatively impact battery life is to regularly fast-charge and/or cycle between 0 and 100%.

Agreed. To me, the convenience of throwing my phone and AirPods on the puck outweighs the difference in efficiency. Moreover, the cost of the puck itself (way too expensive from Apple IMO but got it anyway) and the future battery replacement are not worth the worry either.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Again, AppleCare + is not going to help you here, unless your battery really is defective.

if the battery isn’t “really defective” then there’s no issue.

 

[TheLocNar]

Wireless charging only heats up the copper coils. Not the battery. There is (should be) a layer of insulation between the coils and the battery. And Qi chargers regulate charging speeds due to the heat of the coils.

 

[kevink2]

FWIW, in the first year my iPhone 12 Pro dropped to 89%. But still over 80% after 2, so I continued AC+ monthly to replace my battery when it got under 80%, then drop AC. Now, just over 1 year of AC+, my battery is finally down to 79% so will replace later this month. I lost that gamble, since it would have just been cheaper to replace the battery than 14 months of AC+.

 

[kevink2]

I had an Apple Genius tell me that my iPhone X's battery was short lived due to the 3rd party wireless charger I used. The same charger I've used for 3 years so far on my 12 Pro.

I think much of the difference is the luck of the draw on the battery. Some just hold up better. Some decide to swell. etc.

 

[Jutah]

I’ve owned basically all the iPhone models since the beginning (I’ve skipped just the 12) and I’m really very careful managing them. But with the last two models (13 Pro and 14 Pro Max) I’ve noticed a quite fast battery health decline. I bought my 14 Pro Max in January and battery life already is at 90%.
I know the indicator is not very accurate, but usually after one year I had 95/97 %, while the last two models were 91 and 90, with the same usage pattern and just ONE big change in habits: an (apple original) wireless charger.
what is really puzzling me is that my wife’s iPhone 13, bought in the same day, still is at 97%, and she is using it with very little care (charging it often twice a day), but only with traditional wired charger.
is the wireless charging accelerating the battery wear? I know this is technically possible, but I thought it was negligible…
maybe it’s not 🤨

Don't listen to those they say it's not detrimental: just test yourself how much warm/hit became the phone after some minutes of wireless charge. Guess what's the biggest danger for batteries? Heat.

 

[3Rock]

FWIW, in the first year my iPhone 12 Pro dropped to 89%. But still over 80% after 2, so I continued AC+ monthly to replace my battery when it got under 80%, then drop AC. Now, just over 1 year of AC+, my battery is finally down to 79% so will replace later this month. I lost that gamble, since it would have just been cheaper to replace the battery than 14 months of AC+.

I had an Apple Genius tell me that my iPhone X's battery was short lived due to the 3rd party wireless charger I used. The same charger I've used for 3 years so far on my 12 Pro.

I think much of the difference is the luck of the draw on the battery. Some just hold up better. Some decide to swell. etc.

Maybe you’re right. Luck of the draw. My iPhone 12 Pro did not go down much at all the first two years, and then after about 2 1/2 years in mine was down to 87% and has stayed that way now for over seven months.